Balenciaga RTW Fall 2022

Courtesy of Balenciaga

Most fashion designers claim a formative decade, and it was the 1990s for Demna, formerly known by his full name of Demna Gvasalia.

In those days, Demna lived in Soviet-era Georgia, wished he had cooler friends, watched movies on VHS, and occasionally transformed damaged tapes into wigs or fringed skirts. The newest style ideas at the time — deconstruction, minimalism and anti-fashion among them — were right up his alley then and they remain integral to his fashion vocabulary today.

Meanwhile, that decade at Balenciaga remains “blurry” for most people, a wrong Demna righted with his charming fall 2022 fashion film by director Harmony Korine, dubbed “The Lost Tape” and conjuring what a Balenciaga show might have looked like back in the day if done by Demna.

The designer said he dreamed up the nostalgic film concept once he noticed his fall 2022 collection possessed many hallmarks of the rave and post-grunge era.

“The actual message here is that it could have been exactly the same collection in the ’90s — so how much does fashion really change aesthetically from decade to decade? It’s only a question,” he demurred, though it’s question as rhetorical as “Does Demna like black?”

The designer has a knack for unexpected U-turns. After parading Balenciaga’s first couture collection in 53 years in July, staggering in its perfection of cut and construction, Demna showed up at a black-tie dinner hours later in a ragged ball cap and an oversized black jacket so hacked up it looked as if it had been run over by a lawnmower.

The lo-fi invitation for fall 2022, a VHS cassette labeled with a black marker, is worlds away from the sleek Oculus VR headsets dispatched for Balenciaga’s video-game show last year, and from the recent chatter about it plunging deeper into the metaverse following the skins that debuted on Fortnite in September.

“I needed something a little bit more grounded, looking back to where fashion comes from,” Demna said, likening the video cassette to an art object, insofar as it doesn’t have any purpose, yet it elicits an emotional response. “And that’s something we really need to hold on to.”

To be sure, Demna is a hands-on designer steeped in the gospel of deconstruction, which involves working with actual garments. His fall offering includes vintage dresses that are disassembled and pieced back together, and five-pocket jeans that can be broken down into three pieces and worn as a miniskirt, pants or extra-large thigh-high boots.

His inimitable slouchy tailoring returns, but so do bell-shaped parkas, now with built-in neck pillows; faux furs with jutting collars; stretchy tweed tube dresses that can be pulled on like a sweater, and low-rise rave pants for guys with a logo underwear waistband poking above.

Korine’s grainy footage was pitch perfect in capturing the raw energy — and offbeat hairstyles — of the 1990s, interspersing runway footage with backstage scenes of maskless people smoking and drinking, and the likes of Esther Cañadas, Isabelle Huppert and Suzanne Bartsch snapped by paparazzi on their way into the show.

Even blurred, the collection was sensational and very of the now, with alluring new versions of Demna’s greatcoats with Frankenstein shoulders, pleated dresses with dramatic sleeves and asymmetric hems, and leather coats either pinched at the waist or flaring elegantly.

Punctuating further the idea that fashion never changes, Naomi Campbell was the last to arrive at this back-to-the-future runway event, set off the biggest commotion, and looked as amazing then as she does now.